


blue eyes tenderly through time

by livtontea



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: ?? maybe idk it's not sad tho, Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Heartbreak, Light Angst, M/M, Melancholy, Not Beta Read, Reincarnation, Soulmates, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24225424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livtontea/pseuds/livtontea
Summary: "Have we met? You seem—familiar.""No. No, no I—I don't believe we have."
Relationships: Todd Brotzman/Dirk Gently
Comments: 21
Kudos: 66





	blue eyes tenderly through time

**Author's Note:**

> this is just a quick thing i hammered out so my apologies for all the typos and such!! i'll fix them later lol, as for now, enjoy!

"Have we met? You seem—" a pause, like the word is rolling around on the speaker's tongue, "—familiar."

The words echo in Dirk's ears, pound in his head, and he can't help but still as ice pierces his lungs. He raises his eyes, slowly, and they land on _him._

"No," he says, chokes. "No, no I—I don't believe we have."

"Funny," says the gentleman with the blue eyes. "I could have sworn..."

Dirk smiles tightly.

-

The first time, he's following a calling, moving faster and faster as he feels the sky sings around him. He's flighty on his feet, running to... something. Something. Dirk—he's not Dirk, not then, not yet—doesn't pay attention to anything around him other than the _not-music_ until he's falling to the ground with a shout that isn't his and with a grunt of pain from his own mouth.

"Agh," says the man beneath Dirk. The first thing that stands out is his blue eyes, bright against his weather-worn face. Dirk realizes his hands are on the stranger's chest and scrambles up, adjusting his cloak and offering a hand to the man he had just so unfortunately knocked over.

Their skin connects and Dirk is on fire.

-

"So are you gonna order anything, or what?" The waiter says, unimpressed. Dirk taps his fingers on the table, Morse code, he picked it up in one of his numerous _befores,_ tapping out three words over and over again.

"Or what," he says apologetically, brushes his hands off on his pants and leaves. Blue eyes trail after him and they boil the flesh at the nape of his neck.

-

When Dirk is young, still little Svlad Cjelli sitting in his mother's London apartment, he sees a movie on the old rickety TV.

He's captivated instantly.

His mother is asleep on the couch, busy woman that she is, and he takes care crawling over her to sit in front of the flashing screen. It's an old film, an old movie, a flash of a hand overtaking the screen. Fingers hold a glass of sherry, he knows it, even though he's never had sherry in his life, the camera traces them up to the wrist, to the cuff of the sleeve, to the face—

Svlad falls in love with blue eyes that night. His mother wakes in the morning to find him still in front of the TV, playing the movie again and again, like he's searching for something. He's too wistful for a child, she thinks, unsettled, and switches off the TV.

-

"Ma'am? Ma'am!"

She blinks, and she meets the damsel's eyes. "Oh," she says, and turns and flees. She isn't going to let her heart get broken, not this time, and she refuses to let herself care what the woman with blue eyes and broken violin thinks about her sudden depart. She has a boat to catch.

-

Dirk dreams of lives long past and they're not, not really. They're _there,_ he knows them intimately, remembers all the fleeting touches and kisses pressed to laughing mouths in the dark. He dreams of them, asleep and awake, and yet... He's different. He remembers as if through a smokescreen—edges faded and blurred, old photos strung together by a cord of fraying twine, hung over their bed in the heart of London City. Seattle. New York, Paris, Quebec—it's all there, in his head, and it's somewhere else too, because while in the _befores_ he didn't meet the other at first, now he is in a veiled cage and doesn't have the means to complete himself.

For the first time in many lifetimes, Dirk curls up and feels truly alone. Somewhere a person with blue eyes has hands that fit perfectly into his.

-

The party is in full swing, and the man who bows in front of him has hazel eyes. He presses a kiss to Dirk's hand, and they're hidden from prying eyes, hidden from the law just for a night, and Dirk looks down and smiles.

"Can I have this dance?" says the hazel-eyed man.

"Yes," says Dirk. "Yes, of course."

Dancing with him feels wrong, on a level he just barely comprehends, and as they swirl on polished floors and Dirk catches a glimpse of dark hair and musician's fingers through the crowd, all he can think is that his dance partner doesn't have blue eyes.

-

He's alone.

He's come to accept it, really, it's always—

He always starts out alone.

God.

"Do you hear me?" he screams up at the sky, alcohol in his veins and anger in his flesh. "Do you fucking hear me? Why can't you just—I'm not asking for a lot, am I? Just let me—! Let him— Let us— Why does he not remember, why is he _gone_? I fucking—fuck you! Fuck you, fuck you."

A hand on his shoulder, tentative. A voice behind him, hesitant. He's sobbing, sinking into the wet grass.

A dark-skinned woman with a knife hidden beneath the hem of her dress pulls him into a hug. Her eyes aren't blue, but he— She— They—

"I miss him," he sobs into her shoulder. "I miss him, I miss him, I—"

"Shh, it's okay," she soothes. "It's okay, it's going to be okay. Me too. I miss him too."

She's talking about the body buried in the dirt, and he's talking about blue eyes that never fail to break his heart.

-

He falls overboard.

The storm rages, and when he comes to, he has sand on his back and a hand twined with his. He lolls his head to the side and blue eyes crinkle at the edges in a relieved smile. His lover presses a kiss to his lips. They're alive.

-

"You know," says Todd, wrinkle between his brow that Dirk has to stop himself from reaching over and smoothing out. "Something about you feels... I don't know. Familiar."

The air is knocked out of his chest.

( _You seem familiar. Have I met you? Do I know you? Have we met before? Hey, sorry to bother you, but have I seen you somewhere? Where have you—oh, sorry, sorry, you just... you look like someone I know, have we met? Do we... have we... you feel so familiar. I think I knew you before, somewhere, somehow, you feel it too, right? I think this is supposed to happen, do you feel like this too? You're so familiar.)_

_(I do.)_

"Oh, well, you know." He takes a jittery sip of his tea. "Maybe it's, maybe it's a hunch!" (He calls them hunches, this time around, has called them hunches from that time he saw the man on the TV.) "You could be, ah, experiencing them second-hand because of close proximity to me!"

Todd levels him with an unimpressed stare, and Dirk hides behind his cup, because it's just like the look in the diner, just like the glare from across the room, just like, just like, just like.

"I don't know," he confesses like it's a shameful secret. It's a lie, but only by half, because he _doesn't know_ , has no idea why he always knows and Todd never does. He doesn't know.

Todd rolls his eyes fondly and takes a big sip of coffee, and Dirk turns back to his tea, and the moment is left behind in the past.

-

"Dirk," says Todd, and wraps his hands around Dirk's wrists, keeping him close.

( _Dirk, says the blue-eyed man, and threads his finger's between Dirk's own, and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth.)_

"Yes?" says Dirk, and doesn't move.

Todd seals their lips together like wax burning onto the crease of a letter filled with promises and _nows_.

-

"Your eyes are blue," says Dirk, and Todd laughs.

"So are yours," he says.

Dirk tangles himself into Todd's arms and kisses his lips and thinks that maybe it would be okay to leave _before_ behind, just for a night.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! my tumblr is @farahblack and if you wanna leave a comment to tell me your thoughts that'd be appreciated :)


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